America's poker face
The card game once reserved for smoky back rooms and heavy- drinking hustlers has exploded into a nationwide craze. Poker tournaments draw millions of TV viewers. Casinos that were closing card rooms en masse a few years ago now can't open new ones fast enough. And young and serious players are hitting the tables in droves.
"We've gone from a world where people were embarrassed to say they were poker players to where they're the hit of the family reunion," says Steve Lipscomb, who created the World Poker Tour. He estimates the poker-playing public has grown from around 50 million five years ago to more than 80 million in the United States today--with no end in sight.
Poker didn't get to be the new "it" game by chance. Celebs like Ben Affleck and Matthew Perry have given it the gloss of cool. And the Internet has lured thousands of players, both experienced and not, to ante up as much as $100 million collectively each night, according to PokerPulse, which tracks online statistics (major sites, like PartyPoker.com, often host 40,000 players a night).
But nothing has fueled poker's rise like TV. Expert commentators as well as tiny cameras that show players' cards have turned what was once a pretty dull game to watch into a riveting exercise in cunning and craft. You can see not only how pros play but how they bluff. There are six poker shows on the air, including the Travel Channel's WPT , which features 15 major tournaments a year and ESPN's World Series of Poker , another crowd pleaser and the backbone of ESPN's 10-plus hours of weekly poker.
Ante up. Part of the appeal, says Jeff Shulman, publisher of Card Player magazine, is that "with poker, you can come from nowhere, play against the best--and win." Poker also has today's culturally all-important nobody-to-somebody element--aka the Chris Moneymaker factor. The Tennessee accountant paid $40 to enter a satellite tourney on PokerStars.com and went on to win $2.5 million in the World Series of Poker --with a bluff. These days there are as many as three poker-made millionaires a month--many qualifying in cheap online games ($40 to $200 to join in). Those who don't win their way to the big tournaments can pay to play, though the "buy in" at most WPT events is $10,000.
Less risky home games are exploding. "Before, we had the issue of getting enough players," says Matt Nehmer, 30, who works in public affairs in Washington, D.C. "Now it's the other way around." Getting started doesn't take much cash. The most important element is chips. Not those plastic red, white, and blue ones. Today's card sharks prefer clay chips heavy enough (11.5 grams) to make stacks click. A casino-quality set can run from around $100 a starter set (300 chips) to several hundred for a large set in a tony wooden carrying case. You'll need at least 500 chips for a game with lots of players. Novices would do well to invest in a copy of The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky. For true believers, poker's big names like T. J. Cloutier are now available as bobbleheads.
If that's not game enough, you can buy shares in WPT, which went public this year. But so far, the stock is at best an even bet, wrapped in a bad omen. It came on the market the day Donald Trump filed for bankruptcy protection because of losses at his casinos.
This story appears in the September 13, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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